


That One Time Though

by Anonymous



Category: Merlin (TV) RPF
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Comment Fic, Friendship/Love, M/M, Tavern Tales
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-02
Updated: 2014-03-02
Packaged: 2018-01-14 08:10:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1259185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Colin’s been struggling with his true feelings for Bradley for years. Maybe it’s time he stopped – at least, that’s what Bradley seems to be suggesting, fresh over from LA and evidently <i>not</i> just to see the play, sitting across from Colin in the Swan and throwing down a gauntlet of stories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That One Time Though

**Author's Note:**

> Written for February's inaugural round 'First Time, Last Time, That One Time' over at the [Tavern Tales](http://tavern-tales.livejournal.com/1233.html) comment fest. Sloppy kisses and a round on me go to the tavern keepers for being splendid in general, with special thanks for being so welcoming to anons!
> 
> Warnings for: UST (heading towards RST), Colin's rambling interior monologue, a bit of Catholic angst and repressed feelings, foul language, past drunkenness, dumb jokes, and a reference to past Bradley/Georgia. It's all lies of course, but like any tavern tale it’s meant to go down easy after a few pints. Or donning a special hat. The shiny kind. (I hear there’s a loaner hanging on a peg behind the bar if you forgot your own.)

* * *

Colin's got a million faces he can throw on at a moment's notice and some of them, several of them – more than he cares to admit – are shields against _that thing_ that happens whenever he's around Bradley. 

That thing where time stretches and personal space shrinks. That thing where his tongue feels impossibly thick heavy _Irish,_ and he's not nearly as clever as he thinks he is but – damn him – Bradley laughs anyways. That thing where boundaries, rules, Colin's entire sense of himself mashes up against memory and desire and suddenly he's tripping over details he's not used to noticing outside the work: the calibre of a smile, the subtext between silence and stiff shoulders, the sticky eyes that come and go and stay and _stay,_ asking all the tough questions.

So it's more of a whole knotty syndrome, _that thing._ And unless all the shields are well and truly up Colin tends to get a bit lost in it, and people around them tend to notice.

Like now. Now, here, in the fecking Swan, packed with theatre goers and fans and it's all Bradley's fault because he's started in on the storytelling and Colin's post-Ariel but not yet his most solid, pulled-in, sensible self. He's not got those shields up. He's in no way prepared. 

_Well what is the point of catching up with a mate if it doesn’t include a bit of storytelling?_ the prudent, Mam part of his brain whispers. And it has a point. It does. 

But there are stories and then there are stories and Colin knows he could handle friendly piss-taking or hearing the latest on Bradley's cross-pond adventures. He's even got the right face ready for taking Bradley's no-nonsense compliments without fidgeting and coming over like he needs the toilet. 

What he's _not_ ready for is Bradley nursing his pint in time to Colin's slim glass of orange juice and letting him do most of the talking, looking at him with mild, indulgent eyes, then – just when Colin feels that first squirm of _pointless, this_ – starting in on a relentless jag of That One Times.

'That one time though…' he says. 'Seriously though, Col. That one time.'

At first it's about Anthony or Angel or Big J. Richard and table tennis. Katie and her ruined tights. Their struggles with Treadmill Pig, Muppet Stalker and _Le Garçon Très Plus Mal._

But just when wearing hats indoors for the illusion of anonymity – or at the very least that they're not staying long – starts to seem six shades of silly and it's got good and loud enough and they have to hunch over their chunk of table in order to hear one another (and Colin's _not_ remembering that time in Cardiff when Bradley jostled his shoulder and wormed a hand in under his armpit to pat his chest with a drink-slurred, 'Stop shutting me out with all your angles, Cols, 's not very hopsitabibble'), Bradley suddenly downs what's left in his glass, nudges Colin's foot under that table and says, 'So, that one time when you said – in California, remember – that you wish we'd met before or after?'

'Ehm, what?'

'Exactly. What was that about? Before the show, obviously, but after what? Does this count?'

'Ehm, what?' Colin repeats, frowning into the dregs of his orange juice like the little flecks of pulp might form up Busby Berkeley style and spell out an answer. Or at least buy him some time. 'When was this again?'

'Comic-Con. Year before last. At the hotel,' Bradley says, undaunted. 'After we piled all the pillows and cushions outside Katie's door, squeezed in behind that potted palm and rang her pretending to be room service.'

'That's… That isn't even clever, Bradley. Nor good-stupid. That's just sad.'

Bradley shrugs, smile gone lopsided and so, so familiar. 'We were pissed. Especially you, mate. Thoroughly saturated. Tequila, the Morgan kryptonite, who knew?'

Colin groans, not remembering details so much as an overall montage of humiliation, spinning surroundings, and – next day – the inevitable sour stomach and debilitating headache. 'I plead tequila then. And how is it you remember what was said? You were swimming in the same sauce.' 

Bradley chuckles. He's set his glass down haphazardly and now he centres it on the beermat, squaring the latter so it lines up with Colin's. 'Yes, well, one A, I can actually hold my liquor, and two B, I'd probably more in me to soak it up. And three, you – '

'Three C,' Colin cuts in, finger raised. Pedantry, where Bradley is concerned, is another good delaying tactic.

But a mild, 'Piss off' is all Colin gets before Bradley plunges on. 'Three _C_ , you said it multiple times. Over and over, even after we were rumbled. Got right up in my face a couple of times, too. Katie swore you'd a mind to… '

Bradley pauses and glances up, and his eyes don't get much higher than Colin's mouth. 

Colin's panic reaches a simmer. He knows what Bradley's trying to get at now. Even if he's fuzzy on the details of that night, he _knows_ because he'd hashed it out with Katie in their fashion the next day – and avoided talking about it with Bradley in _their_ fashion for a couple of years now – and he's all too aware of the eyes and ears and nosey mobiles packed into the pub.

Bradley starts to say something, then stops, expression folding in around the frown lines between his brows. It's a rare display of indecision, of censoring himself around Colin, and it is this more than Bradley's sudden return to London or the current topic of conversation that makes Colin wake the feck up and see that something real is happening here, something _possible,_ and that he needs to make a decision.

And he can appreciate why Bradley's broaching the topic in a public place – plausible deniability, plus rejection's easier to bear in a roomful of strangers – but he's not having this conversation in the Swan.

He pulls back, sits up straight. 'Is that you then?' he says, louder now, nodding towards Bradley's empty glass. 'Or will you have another?'

A shadow passes over Bradley's face, a flash of puzzlement – or anger – so quick Colin wouldn't have caught it if he hadn’t been watching for it. Somewhere he's got a whole jarful, a whole binful. Times he's thrown Bradley off kilter. Times he's been a cunt, or a coward. Times he's been a tease. 

_For these, and all of my sins…_

Before he gives the wrong impression yet again, Colin adds, 'Shame about Froman, though.' He watches the name slide and click into place, the light that dawns in Bradley's eyes. He remembers it then, their old panic switch.

'Froman? Abe Froman?' Bradley holds Colin's gaze for a solid moment, amusement barely contained, then he looks round the pub and his whole face shifts, tightens, grows older. 'Shame indeed.'

'Mmm.' Colin pats his pockets down until he finds one of his signing pens, steals the mat out from under his glass. 'His mam's set up one of those memorial websites. She'd love to hear from you, I'm sure. Here…'

He pauses, second-guessing himself. It's a terrible idea, really. Self-consciously old fashioned. Silly. _Très très_ uncool.

But he's got the pen and the beermat out now, and there's no good way of backing down from a pen and a beermat. He can't very well say 'I tell a lie. His mam hates your face,' or 'Never mind about Abe. Pen and a beermat, who would win in a fight?' So he does what he's trained to in a crisis; he improvises. 

When he's finished writing, he slides the mat across the table.

Bradley glances at it, obviously curious as this part is new, but knowing better than to actually read it until he's on his own. He tucks it into his breast pocket and rises, quickly doing up the zip on his jacket.

'Well, cheers mate,' he says, lips quirked. 'As I said before, you make a fine sprite.'

Colin grins his easy-peasy, 'I'm your average happy fella and same again to you' grin, but it feels less fake than he intends. It's never been easy, fake-smiling at Bradley. Colin thinks he should probably get out of the business.

'Cheers yourself for coming. Glad you could make it. My best to your mam, yeah?'

Bradley nods and claps him on the shoulder once, twice, then slips away through the press of bodies just as two women edge in, saying, 'Excuse me, Colin, but…?'

~ ~ ~

It takes Colin a good ten minutes to extract himself from the pub, another five to find a secluded-enough spot from which to ring Bradley. Who is laughing. Laughing full-on, and that's what Colin hears when he answers, and it makes him feel both foolish and like he doesn’t know what he's been waiting for. Why he's still being so coy.

Everyone who knows him knows he's not looking. Those who know him best know it's not due to work or shyness or lack of interest, but because the part has already been cast.

His mates never tease, but they tend to give the topic such a wide berth, to leave it be in such a glaring way that they might as well do. Or, as Colin's parents had done at Christmas, they simply wait for the moment to get good and ripe – bellies full and lights down low and Colin's sense of being someone new and grown-up and _apart_ worn down to a nub by being back in the family embrace – stare fixedly at the telly and say, 'So… '

_'Dammit, I thought… Have you seen this?'_

'Seen what now?'

_'The blog, Froman's.'_

'What? No, that's never… I just made up a url. Listen – '

_'Well it's real alright. I was just looking at it. It's hilarious, some guy pretending to be Froman… absolutely filthy pictures of sausages. A sausage fest, if you will. I'm shocked, Cols. Shocked and delighted.'_

'Grand. Glad I could help expand your horizons.' Bright, boisterous laughter heralds a pack of young women and Colin retreats deeper into the little alley off of Bankside as they pass by, curling himself in against the pale brick.

Bradley's still chuckling. _'I thought it’d be directions to some pop-up or veggie dive and, you know, the password.'_

'The password?'

_'To get me in. Or does your local cabal of kale worshippers use a secret handshake?'_

Colin can't help but grin – is aching to laugh actually, at himself if nothing else – but his gut feels too twisted to let it out. 'Well, I was going to write the address, but thought it would be safer this way. In case it fell into the wrong hands.'

_'Oho! Such as?'_

'Ladies,' Colin says, one eye over his shoulder, watching the alley mouth. 'With ill intent. And internet, I’m sure of it. They're everywhere.'

_'Such a charmer.'_ There is a pause during which the traffic noise recedes, then Bradley's voice comes back clearer, calmer. _'You do know I'd eat the thing before I let that happen, right?'_

'Well that's one way to get more fibre in your diet – without resorting to kale.'

This time he only gets a snort, along with, _'So what exactly is going on here, Morgan, we still doing dinner? Where should I meet you?'_

Colin squeezes his eyes shut. 'Come back to mine?' He hears nothing but breathing in response, so he pushes on. 'I mean, I can feed us, so you'll not starve, but it'll be more private, so.' 

Bradley makes a sound that Colin can’t interpret. 

'Look, I'm knackered. I know you must be too, but I'd really like… '

_'What, Colin?'_

'To spend some time with you.' He winces as he says it, scrapes his thumbnail along a ridge of mortar. 'You've been… ehm, feck.' He takes a breath, regroups. 'On my mind. A lot.'

_'Oh?'_

'Yep.' Colin flips round, nodding. He gazes absently at the view: a little slice of the night river, the Southwark Bridge and grand columns of Vintners Court across the way all lit up green and golden and positively flaunting it. By British standards, at any rate. 'Yes. Definitely.'

_'Thought you were sick of me already, way you were carrying on back there.'_

'No, no. Just caught off guard.'

_'What?'_

'You and your face, that's what,' Colin mutters. 'You and your That One Times. And you call me a charmer.'

This laugh is different than the others. It is a bit flustered, a bit too bright, and when it sounds as if it's growing fainter, as if Bradley's holding his phone away from his face, Colin grips his own mobile and rushes on, determined.

'Was I trying to tell you something that one time, that's what you were asking? In California, was I wanting to kiss you? Yes, I was. I wanted – well, _everything_ – everything we couldn’t have because of the show.'

There is a pause, a truly awful one. 

_'All because of the show, was it?'_ The calm, measured delivery is so much like Richard – Colin doesn't know if he's doing it on purpose or not – but the underlying pique is all Bradley. And rightly so.

'And because I'm no good with my own baggage. Much prefer mucking about in other people's – a walking cliché of an actor, me.'

Bradley sighs. _'Aren’t we all.'_

'Oh? Now what does that mean, I wonder. You trying to edge in on my _mea culpa_ here?'

_'Wouldn’t dream of it. Flog away, Cols, beat your mighty breast. Only… Before you go feeling too guilty, you should know that Georgia and I have already been through it forward and back and she's finished with me on account of refusing to be the other woman. Her words.'_

'What?' 

And now the conversation's taken a daunting turn, as Georgia has never been anything but sweet with him in her somewhat detached, busy, kiss-kiss ta-ra type of way. She was one of the few he thought he'd had completely fooled. He'd never once considered that Bradley might mention him, might discuss his feelings and this… whatever it is between them. 

Whatever it's maybe about to be. 

_'There was also something in there about emotional maturity, a bunch of isms, and different career paths.'_

'Rubbish!'

_'I know. That's what I said. But I think she's spot on about one thing.'_

'How's that?'

_'That I should woo you with stories rather than cheese.'_ There is a beat, a little huffed, self-deprecatory laugh, then Bradley rings off with, _'See you at yours then.'_

Colin's left blushing in an alley, staring down at his mobile with his heart going pitter-pat and his face scrunched up in a moue of disgust.

'Woo,' he says to no one in particular. 'Seriously, _woo_?'

He texts Bradley his address and the nearest tube station, along with _**If captured don't swallow phone… Low in fibre**_

Mere seconds later he gets back _**High in iPhat?**_ and jams a fist under his nose before someone overhears his hysterical snort-cackling.

'Right,' he says when he's calmed a bit, peering both ways down the alley. He pockets his mobile, pulls his headphones on and sets off at a fast clip. 

Bankside's bustling with its new nightlife, and he keeps his head down out of habit, but also – well, Bradley's finally stumped him. Colin hasn’t got a face for this sort of anticipation. It is both terrifying and strangely… ordinary. And so fecking _lovely_ that Colin thinks it should hurt to feel it – because that's one of the things the Church has given him – and yet he feels it anyway. Wallows in it, all the way to the station.

He wonders what he'd see if he looked in a mirror right now: a grinning madman, perhaps, or a fish out of water, mouth gurning and gills flapping away. Perhaps the sly, smug little shit his brother keeps insisting he is to their parents. Or perhaps just a tired man, working his way up to happy.

He decides, for once, that he doesn't care. He'd rather start thinking about all the stories to come, starting with that one time he finally got the courage to back Bradley up against the nearest surface and wear the face off him.

_~ ~ ~end~ ~ ~_


End file.
